How Can Social Media Help You Do What You Love? [VIDEO]

Meet Kamil Tamiola, a one-time researcher in biophysics, turned National Geographic photographer. Kamil hadn’t used Facebook for years, but since it was such a great networking tool he decided to pick it up again 14 months ago only to see it completely transform his life. As a researcher in biophysical chemistry, he spent countless hours in the lab doing work, testing and analysis. But you see his true passion was photography, and every single second of his free time was spent in the mountains looking for great new shots to capture. His dream was always to become an adventure photographer. Eventually his friends convinced him to setup a Facebook page for his photography and start sharing his photos with the world. Sharing on social media is a powerful force, so it didn’t take long for his page to build up in popularity with a few of his photos going viral. With support building around his fanpage, this gave him confidence to submit his work to National Geographic who loved his work.

His snapshot here of a mountaineer’s life got featured by National Geographic and they also posted it on Facebook where the photo quickly picked up more than 100,000 likes within 24 hours!

Fast forward to today, Kamil is doing what he loves now because of social media. Due to exposure through Facebook and National Geographic, Kamil was able to start his own adventure photography business landing deals to license his work with 3 major photo agencies. Kamil mentioned that:

Without any doubt, Facebook was instrumental in sharing and promoting my work, it helped me to find and reach the people who just like me love adventures and care for mountains.”

We can only be in awe of what some people have accomplished with social media. And the great thing is we all can take part in its power to better our own lives and the people around us too. I used to work as a computer engineer and although it was great job that provided value to our community, I wasn’t doing what I loved either. I was “working for the man” on projects that lacked any creativity or intellectual challenge regardless of merit. And I always had dreams of starting my own technology and design company one day. But how could I be sure it would work or that anyone would ever find out about it? It wasn’t till I got introduced to social media that I ever believed my dream was possible. I was able to start and brand DashBurst in theory, testing out the waters via social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook and smaller niche sites like Empire Avenue, where I could begin to build an audience of people with similar interests to me. Eventually DashBurst picked up some steam gaining several thousand followers and fans. This gave me the confidence to move forward in the effort full-time. Today, DashBurst has a vibrant community base of over 150,000 subscribers, a new digital magazine launched (that you’re reading right now) as well as a first-of-its-kind social network and content marketing platform debuting in several weeks (more on that to come).

Now I don’t want to paint this as a tale of glory like Kamil’s rise to the top of the world of photography, rather just give you a personal example of how social media has empowered me do what I love to do too. And more than likely, it could help you do the same. DashBurst may still have a long way to go, but I’m very thankful to all the people like you that make up our active social networking community, all helping each other do what we love!

Are you doing what you love to do? If not, could social media get you started?